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Autochrome,
first colour process
The work of (Mary) Olive Edis (1876-1955) is well-represented in the NPG
by a large collection of sepia platinotype portraits of celebrated
subjects that she photographed in a career that began in 1903 and
continued up until the late 1920s. In 1919, under the auspicies of the
Imperial War Museum, she travelled to France and Belgium to photograph
the contribution made to the war effort by women. In her self-portrait
her cap-badge spells NWM standing for the Museums's previous name
National War Museum.
The autochrome process was the first photographic method of producing
natural colour photographs and was invented by the brothers Lumiere in
1907. Edis took up the process in the early 1910s and was to take
interesting early colour photographs of subjects such as the novelist
Thomas Hardy (1913) and the playwright George Bernard Shaw. However much
of her most attractive colour work consists of portraits of her
immediate family.
Self
Portraits
Olive Edis
Sepia Platinotype photograph
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